What flavour are your guests?
In the immortal words of Forest Gump:
"Life is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you're going to get".
Hosting is like that too... Guests come in all nationalities, shapes, sizes, customs and habits, and that's one of the most wonderful things about it - you get to meet a kaleidoscope of humanity and realise that despite the differences, we have more in common than not.
I was recently asked to speak at a public event by Western Melbourne Tourism in partnership with Airbnb.
In preparation, I thought about the guests I had hosted in my home in Williamstown in the preceding 12 months, and it turned into an enlightening exercise about the people who chose to stay with me, and why. I am now much more aware of the guests I attract and why they want to stay, and can tailor my messages accordingly to improve my bookings. This is how I did it:
Looking back over my bookings, I asked myself the following questions:
What is their country of origin?
I assigned each booking to the following categories:
Australian (AU), Asian (AS) or Other International (OI)
2. Why are they here?
I assigned each booking to the following categories:
Vacation (VA), Visiting Friends & Family (VFF), Business Travel (BT) or Relocation (RL)
I exported a 12 month report of bookings from my Airbnb account as a spreadsheet, added 2 columns to assign the categories as shown above, then assigned each guest with a country of origin and a reason for staying (this required a bit of research by clicking back into the bookings on the Airbnb site).
Want to see what the outcome of my own research was? You can see it in the presentation I gave at the meeting.
You should try this yourself and you will learn a lot about what flavour your guests are, and why they are staying with you!
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Regards, Veronica
